FORTY-FOUR
Yolanda Figueroa was the first of us to step into the darkened corridor. Zoya was behind her, and I was third in line.
“I’ve been up in these hallways several times a week for nine years,” Yolanda said. “I can find my way down easily and guide you there. For now, you should follow the pipes.”
“What?” Zoya asked.
“Some run vertically and others horizontally. Just keep a hand on the ones that travel lengthwise over your head. They go the full distance of the corridor. Holding on to one of them will steady you. Keep you from bouncing off walls.”
There was an eerie stillness in the short hallway that was even more unpleasant as we made the right turn into the longer one that led back in the direction from which I’d arrived. Earlier in the evening I had been able to hear voices on the loudspeaker from time to time—some of them familiar to me. Now, no one was speaking.
I flicked on Zoya’s lighter again. It was a plastic disposable Bic, and I had no idea how much butane was left in it. I could see that there were no obstructions ahead of us so I turned it off.
Yolanda was more sure-footed than we in moving forward. I reached up to grab the old piping overhead, which was dust-covered and rough with rust. It made me more comfortable than the prospect of stumbling as I walked. Zoya Blunt couldn’t reach the pipes, so she held on to the bottom hem of Yolanda’s uniform jacket.
We reached the end of the corridor, and Yolanda pulled on the heavy door and opened it.
“No officer here,” she said.
“There wasn’t one when your partner and I came up,” I said. “The last cop I saw was guarding the elevator door one flight down.”
I moved into place, around Zoya, to face Yolanda. For the first time since the blackout, I could see into the terminal.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“If you can’t deal with heights, then don’t look down.”
Off to my right, the pounding rain hitting the long windows over Lexington Avenue in sheets was now accompanied by ragged streaks of lightning. At that very moment, a clap of thunder caused Zoya’s heels to lift off the ground.
The lightning illuminated the all-glass catwalk, focusing me on the dizzying effect of the translucent flooring we had to cross to get to the stairs that were next to the incapacitated elevator.
“I can’t do it,” Zoya said.
“This is no time to be afraid,” I said softly. “I can’t stand heights, either, but it’s our way out of here.”
“It’s not about heights.”
“What, then?”
I was looking down through the glass at the floor of the concourse below us. I’d never seen it cloaked in darkness before. I could make out figures moving across the wide space but had no idea who they were or what they were doing.
“We played on these catwalks all the time when we were kids. My dad used to rest in the lounge. The engineer’s lounge.”
“Quick, Zoya,” I asked. “Where’s that?”
“On the fourth level, southeast corner. We played hide-and-seek,” she said, trembling again. “Nik will see me if I walk out on that glass. I know he will.”
Yolanda was determined to get us down. “He doesn’t know you’re here, Zoya. He’s looking for cops. He’s looking for ghosts that don’t exist. Besides, you can’t glance up from down below and know who anyone is. Trust me, I’ve spent hours looking for trespassers who get in here. You gotta be face-to-face, not looking at the soles of someone’s shoes.”
There was a flash of light that blinded me for several seconds. The three of us retreated from the lip of the catwalk back into the stairwell.
“Was that lightning?” Zoya asked, holding on to my arm.
Yolanda answered. “No. Emergency Services must have gotten some floodlights set up. Looks to me that’s what it is.”
“That will help,” I said. “They’ll do floodlights and bullhorns.”
“It won’t help anything,” Zoya said, clutching on to me. “They’ll just make it easier to see us walking across up here.”
Yolanda was losing patience with Zoya Blunt. “Tell you what. You two stay right here in this landing, okay? You can lock the door to the corridor we just came from till I get back. I’ll go down to get the other officer and you can wait—”
“We don’t split up,” I said.
“Shit. You’re worried ’cause you don’t have a gun, Ms. Cooper? We’ll get somebody up here with one in five minutes.”
“It’s not about the gun, Yolanda. I just don’t want you to be alone.”
“We patrol alone most of the time. We only have partners in the tunnels and for VIP security setups. I’m used to this.”
Yolanda Figueroa was determined to head out on her own. Zoya Blunt had seated herself in a corner of the dark landing. I was torn between how to handle both of them.
Just then, Keith Scully’s voice shouted through a bullhorn. “Sorry for the glitch, guys. The stationmaster tells me that Mr. Blunt put his finger on something called the red button, to rather dramatic effect. He’s managed to jury-rig the power controls in the terminal, so I apologize for the loss of light and sound.
“I also apologize for putting so many of you men and women, whom I respect enormously, in danger. So I’ll give Mr. Blunt exactly three minutes to show the white flag. If not, then there’s no deal on the table. The district attorney has withdrawn all possible plea discussions. And I’m reminding you that Nik Blunt is armed and extremely dangerous. We’ll get you some light back as soon as we can.”
“Another ten minutes,” I said, “and we’ll be able to see where we’re going and who’s around to help us.”
“I’ll be back before then,” Yolanda said.
A crash of thunder cracked the quiet of our landing.
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” she said, Glock in hand. “I’m going down this staircase, just the way you came, Ms. Cooper. If you can bring yourselves to do it, just inch out a bit and you can watch me cross over on the catwalk. Right inside that door across the way, you said there’s an officer on patrol. You won’t ever lose sight of me.”
I peered out onto the catwalk. The improvised lighting from below and the occasional streaks of lightning from outside showed that it was empty, top to bottom.
Yolanda Figueroa stooped in front of Zoya Blunt, resting a hand on her knee. “You okay with this? Is this what you want?”
The young woman bit her lip and nodded.
Then Yolanda smiled at her. “My boyfriend’s one of those guys in the operation room, so you know I’ll be right back. Gotta keep him safe at all costs.”
No wonder the cop was so eager to get extra protection for the men in control of the train lines.
She stood up. “You get it now, Ms. Cooper? Or are you heartless?”
“I can’t fight with you, Yolanda. He’s a lucky guy, so you’d better be careful.”
“I’m good at my job. I’ll be back.”
Yolanda Figueroa took the staircase down, moving faster without us. When she reached the floor below, about fifteen stories over the main concourse, I watched from my vantage point, where the catwalk met the enclosed landing that shielded us from sight. I envied the confidence with which she strode over the glass bricks, backlit by an occasional lightning flash.
She pulled on the door and it opened. She disappeared inside.
Since the elevator was incapacitated, I knew it would take several minutes longer for her to jog down the many steps necessary to get to the ground floor, and several more to find Scully or our team.
“You okay?” I asked Zoya, lighting another cigarette for her.
“I just want to sit here. This is fine.”
The storm was passing right overhead. The lightning streaks and thunderclaps were coming much closer together in time.
But on
ly ninety seconds later, the door that Yolanda Figueroa had entered, one flight beneath us, burst open onto the catwalk.
From the angle at which I watched, I could see the figure of the young woman—gone almost limp, her head flopping against her chest—being pushed back out over the glass flooring by a young man dressed in camouflage clothes and assault boots.
I knelt beside Zoya and put my hand up to signal her to stay back.
Nik Blunt had Yolanda in his arms. It appeared from the blood on both her upper body and on Blunt’s clothing that he had already slit her throat.
I was helpless as I watched him drag her to the window he had opened over the concourse. “Hey, Scully! Commissioner!” Blunt screamed out into the poorly lit space.
Someone played the floods until they caught the two bodies—one alive, one probably dead—framed in the giant glass box so high above them.
“Hey, Scully! You looking for your officer?” Blunt screamed. “I told her to mind the gap, but she didn’t listen to me.”
I watched as Blunt threw Yolanda’s body to the concourse fifteen flights below. Before she hit the marble floor, snipers were firing at Blunt, bullets seemingly deflected by the thick panes of glass.
“I told her,” he yelled down, laughing as if he’d been seized by a demon, before he scurried back to the safety of the landing and let the door slam behind him. “I told her to mind the gap.”
FORTY-FIVE
“We’ve got to move,” I said, pulling Zoya Blunt to her feet.
“What happened to Yolanda?”
“She’s been hurt. We’ve got to go.”
“Nik? Was that Nik shooting?”
Maybe Zoya hadn’t heard his voice in the recess of the landing. “Probably. I think he’s on his way upstairs. I think Yolanda was right about his goal. We need to get out of this space as fast as we can.”
I knew that we couldn’t go downstairs. The risk of encountering Blunt on the way was too great. But he was headed in our direction and we had to change position as quickly as possible.
“Put out your cigarette, Zoya. Someone might see the light.”
“Attention, team.” There was a new voice on the bullhorn. It was Mike Chapman. He had undoubtedly seen Yolanda’s body splatter on the concourse floor and knew Zoya and I were in trouble. “Change of plans.”
Now he had to talk to us without giving Blunt any idea who or where we were.
“Okay, Zoya. That’s the detective who was working with us downstairs. We’re going to be fine. He’ll tell us what to do.”
“He doesn’t even know where we are.”
“I think he knows where Nik is, though.” I opened the door through which we had entered the landing. I knew Mike wasn’t going to send us across the glass catwalk and expose us to this maniac.
“My team needs to report immediately to Captain Poseidon’s son,” Mike said, choosing his words carefully. “Got that? To Poseidon’s son.”
This was not a time for Mike’s dark humor. If there was a Captain Poseidon, I didn’t know him. I took Zoya’s hand to lead her, but I wasn’t sure where to go. The beating of my heart seemed louder than the crashing thunder.
I kept repeating Poseidon’s name to myself and all that surfaced in my mind was Greek mythology, not an actual police captain. Of course, Poseidon. God of the sea. Did Mike want us to make our way downstairs to the Oyster Bar?
“Remember, men,” Mike called through the bullhorn. “The captain’s son has wings. Wings.”
“Did you and your brothers learn mythology when you were kids?” I asked Zoya.
“No. Not me. I never heard anybody talking about it. Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s great. Right now it’s great.” I couldn’t compete with Mike’s knowledge of the Greek and Roman warriors, but I’d learned a lot from listening to him over the years.
“Why is he calling us ‘men’? He’s not talking to you at all.”
“Oh, yes he is. He’s just trying to throw Nik off, not alert him to the presence of the two of us.”
Poseidon, god of the sea, was also the father of Pegasus. And Pegasus was the divine winged horse of Greek myth—and of the zodiac. The golden image of Pegasus was one of the larger figures in the mural of the celestial sky that stretched above us.
Of course it made more sense for Mike to direct us upward than to chance an encounter with Nik Blunt, who was at least one floor below when he encountered Yolanda Figueroa. One flight up and we would be in the corner of the building, directly below the painting of Pegasus.
“Repeating, gentlemen, that I will meet you by Captain Poseidon’s son. Not where his son actually is, but where he should be. Where his son should be,” Mike said. “As God is my witness.”
I stood still and repeated Mike’s last words. “As God is my witness?”
He was telling me something. Something he was convinced I knew. I got who Poseidon was and from that had figured Pegasus. What did God have to do with any of this?
I played the words over and over again in my mind, until the clues finally locked into place.
The celestial ceiling had been painted in reverse, we had learned in our tour. The information had seemed irrelevant at the time but satisfied my curiosity about the magnificent aqua sky. The artist had made a mistake in creating his great mural. I tried to remember everything we had learned such a short time ago.
And then I recalled what happened when Commodore Vanderbilt’s heirs had been informed about the mistake, the very week Grand Central had opened. They announced that the mural was not an error at all, but a view of the earth from the heavens. God’s view. God was their witness.
“Mike will meet us on the other side,” I said to Zoya. Not where Pegasus really is, but where he’s supposed to be. “On the top floor. Let’s retrace our steps and you can follow me across.”
I let the door to the landing close behind us, lighted the Bic to make sure the path ahead was clear, and started jogging to the far corner of the building. The winding corridor was the entire length of a city block, parallel to 42nd Street, taking us from the Lexington Avenue side of the terminal to the Vanderbilt Avenue side.
When we reached the opposite landing, both of us took thirty seconds to catch our breath. There were no sounds from the corridor behind us. No voices, no footsteps, no gunshots.
“Ready?”
“You think your detectives are out there?” Zoya asked.
“If not now, then any minute. It’s a lot of territory for them to have to cover quickly. Sixteen flights or more up the staircases, most of them locked.”
Who knew what kind of carnage they faced in the wake of Blunt’s maneuvers, and whether he had placed other obstacles in their way?
“How will you know when they get up here?”
“I’ll—I’ll take a look. I’ll open the door.” I was as anxious to see protection for us as she was.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?”
“As sure as I can be,” I said. “I’m going to open it now, okay?”
“Yeah.” She had her back flat against the wall, out of sight of anyone who would be in a position to see inside.
I cracked the door a couple of inches. The concourse was still bathed in darkness, but floodlights were panning the entire room. Some were running horizontally, along the walls and back and forth on the catwalks on both ends, while others were scanning from the top of the vaulted ceiling back to the floor. I figured I had less than ten seconds to stay out of the spotlight.
Mike still had the bullhorn and now he was talking to the fugitive. “We got your stash, Mr. Blunt. Whatever ammunition you don’t have with you, we’ve got most of it. So if you’re running low, you might want to rethink your plan.”
I closed the door, counted to thirty, and opened it again.
“All that ammo you left in your crib in the
tunnel, Mr. Blunt? That’s gone. Thanks to Smitty, former mayor of the moles. Cleaned you right out.”
I wanted Mike or Mercer or Scully—anyone who knew Zoya and I were on the loose—to spot me and send cops to make us safe, but the last thing I wanted was for Nik Blunt to catch us. I placed my shoulder against the heavy door and looked again but saw nothing and no one. Mike wasn’t talking to Blunt about Yolanda’s death. I’m sure he didn’t want to give the murderer the satisfaction of knowing how everyone guarding the terminal felt about the killing of a police officer.
I was getting as depressed as I was anxious. Maintaining a stiff upper lip in front of Zoya Blunt was becoming more difficult by the minute.
Why hadn’t any of the cops reached our position yet? Had Blunt intercepted and killed more of them, or was it just the steep and circuitous route they had to take to get to us?
I thought Mike would have raced up the many flights of stairs himself, but it was more like him to stay on the loudspeaker, letting me hear his steady voice talking directly to me, communicating his presence and support. He would have dispatched other cops to come find Zoya and me.
I knew there were sharpshooters set up all over the terminal by this point. I hated the idea of sticking my head out into the open space at the very top of the catwalk.
“Attention, team!” Chapman’s voice again. “Meeting unavoidably delayed. I know where you are, team. Check the Edisons. Check the Edisons. Waiting for power, team. Waiting for four thousand bare bulbs to go on.”
I was fast becoming too exhausted to play Mike’s word game. Edison and bulbs suggested lighting. We knew the power was out. And four thousand bulbs was another count that figured in the structure of the terminal. Architects wanted to show off the new technology of the day: electricity. Every bulb that ringed the circumference of the ceiling of Grand Central—thousands of them—was absolutely bare.
Mike was broadcasting something to me that I needed to know. It had to do with the innumerable bulbs that were just overhead outside the landing.
Terminal City (Alex Cooper) Page 33